A battle is heating up between online travel sites and U.S. hotels over the best way to book your hotel room. Like most things in business, the feud comes down to money.

The American Hotel and Lodging Association, the trade group for hotels in the U.S., is pushing for legislation to crack down on fraudulent online booking sites that trick travelers into paying for hotel rooms but have no relation to the hotels. The group says the scams cost travelers up to $1.3 billion a year.

A coalition of online travel sites isn’t buying it. The sites say the hotel industry is exaggerating the online scam problem to push travelers to book directly on hotel sites so that hotels can avoid paying sales commissions to the online booking sites.

“It’s just a veiled attempt at trying to scare consumers to book directly with the hotel chains themselves,” said Philip Minardi, a spokesman for the coalition of online sites, including Expedia, Priceline and Airbnb.

The stakes are high in this feud. Travelers make an estimated 480 online hotel bookings per minute in the U.S. Hotels pay third-party booking sites commissions of up to 25 percent of the room price. Hotels also want travelers to book directly from them so they can pitch future deals and packages and develop guest loyalty.

American seeks to shed Wi-Fi partner

Anybody who has tried to use wireless Internet on a commercial airplane knows that the speeds can be frustratingly slow.

American Airlines, the world’s largest carrier, said it has had enough of slow onboard Wi-Fi. For that reason, the Fort Worth, Texas-based carrier has filed a legal petition to break its contract with its onboard Wi-Fi provider, Gogo.

In the petition filed this month, American said its contract requires Gogo to match or exceed the connectivity services of its competitors. If Gogo chooses not to upgrade its services after American makes the request, American says it has the right to break its agreement with Gogo.

The petition asks the court to declare that American has the right to break its contract.

But Gogo officials are shrugging off the petition, saying it is switching to a faster satellite-based system. The Chicago company has already installed the faster onboard system on Aeromexico planes, with plans to roll it out on Delta Air Lines and other carriers later this year.

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Hugo Martin, Los Angeles Times